Despite its far from salubrious roots, Halloween has always been a favorite holiday. And why not? My “Halloween years” of costumes and trick-or-treat happened in safe, well-lighted, mostly suburban neighborhoods in Albuquerque and Colorado Springs. They were filled with lots of treats, not too many tricks, and things that were slightly scary and mostly fun.
We knew our neighbors and they knew us, though they were very good at pretending otherwise as they made a fuss over our costumes.
Those costumes were usually homemade, occasionally augmented by a flimsy vacu-form plastic mask that fastened around your head with a thin rubber band that generally got fiercely tangled in your hair. Favorite costumes I got to wear were:
–witch with a tall orange cardboard hat covered in black glitter stars
–gypsy with a red cotton skirt, purple satin top, colorful bead necklace, and one of those masks.
–chinese princess with green silk “pajamas” and a paper lantern painted with a dragon
–Raggedy Ann, complete with red-dyed mop wig and red and white striped socks
On Halloween (or the Friday before if it was on a weekend) we were allowed to wear our costumes for a school party and a parade around the playground. If someone showed up without a costume, teachers were prepared with extras – no one got left out. We all hoped it would stay warm enough for us to not have to ruin our costume with a coat.
Treats came in smaller sizes of usual candies, but also things that you only got on Halloween, like wax lips or vampire fangs, BB Bats, peanut butter kisses, candy corn, and black and orange jelly beans. The best were homemade popcorn balls or carmel apples.
Decorations tended to be relatively modest by today’s standards – no inflatables or giant skeletons, though some people went to great lengths to make scary yards with styrofoam headstones, dry ice fog, and spooky sounds. My favorite decorations were the screen-printed cardboard cutouts that we taped to the windows and doors. We had this set, and the witch at the top of this posth – she was my favorite. My brother liked the snarling cat.
I hope the children who come to our door this year will grow up with fond memories and favorite costumes. I hope no one will get left out. I hope the world we live in will grow ever safer and be filled with only the fun scary things. I am not at all certain that this will be possible – it seems that there is a steady increase in truly frightening things. But, I intend to do all I can to make the world safe for children, whether they live here or far, whether they celebrate Halloween or not.
(Many thanks to those who share the open copy images I found on Google)
